3rd Gen longevity Question

Morning,
Have a 19 SR utility 4x2, 15k miles. Given the legendary reliability of the 2.7 . Are there any known or suspected fatal flaws or weak spots for the other parts of our trucks that won’t allow them to last 2-300k miles besides just oil changes, and air/engine filters?

 

If you live in salt country, frame rot if you don't protect it on a regular basis.

Your maintenance list is extremely short. Oil and air filters are just rudimentary baby steps. Check out your owners manual.

Get in the swing of things and it should hit your target mileage.

 

Regular fluid & filter changes along with an aggressive rust protection program are the keys to vehicle longevity.

Seeing as you have only 15K on a truck nearly 5 years old you should be changing fluids on time based intervals rather than miles.

One area where I prefer to differ from factory recommendations is changing the engine coolant, I feel the recommended intervals are too long.

The coolant is the only thing protecting the head gaskets, the corrosion inhibitors are depleted over time.
Although the coolant may "look good" as far as color, that isn't an indicator of still having strong inhibitors to protect against corrosion.

 

I am a very low mileage driver now.
This means an oil and filter change every six months, even though I only do 2500 miles per year in the 2023.

 

Change oil, coat frame, don't look for problems, and enjoy.

 

With that odometer?

Keep it away from the rats.

Enjoy the truck.

 

Clean and prep any rust on the frame and body, cosmoline the frame, regular fluid changes, maybe wrap some of the exposed wirong harnesses in the engine bay with cayenne pepper tape to dissuade rodents from chewing on the insulation.

 

There are of course more maintenance items that need to be done, differential fluid change, transmission fluid change, brake fluid change, spark plugs, power steering fluid, coolant, thermostat, serpentine belt, PCV valve...

Rust often kills these trucks in northern regions with road salt. Get rustproofing done before each winter if you live in such a region.

Budget for a steering rack replacement ($1-1.5k) every 100k or so if you keep the truck exclusively on pavement.

If your truck's color is white (as with many SR utility 4x2s), watch for large-scale paint flaking, usually starting at the window frame.

 

I don’t have the engine in question but these threads might interest you, if you haven’t seen them already:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/who-has-the-highest-mileage-3rd-gen.694646/

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/300-000-mile-club.152951/

There are a few 3rd gen owners around here with over 300k already, I think. Not sure which engines they have though.

 

I had a 2000 with same motor..a well known problem with the 2.7 it unfortunately suffered was the exhaust valves sinking into the head. I had the head rebuilt at 100k and finally just replaced the head when it showed signed of happening again at 250K. So unless something changed , it is important to have valves adjusted as part of maintenance...aside from that, only thing ever needed in 250k miles was new contacts on the starter motor.